Men Of Shade

    All the candles are passing out, one by one.
    They have evaporated their brightness,
    overpowered limpid cracks in their own flames, seized
    the outpouring air with hesitant breath to brave
    a flicker of new hearth while knocking holes against
    the warm men decorating fireside shade.

Paul Cameron Brown

Paul Cameron Brown is a Canadian poet known for his extensive work in both poetry and art criticism. Born in western Canada, Brown has had a prolific career in writing, often intertwining themes of human experience and nature. His works have been showcased in various literary magazines and anthologies. With a style that is both reflective and evocative, he has gained recognition not only in Canada but also internationally.

Paul Cameron Brown

The Toronto Star, Saturday, November 30, 1985

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Lavender

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Point Spread

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Triangular Trade

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Turncoat

    Sitting in the spendthrift dark
    lilting pennies away,
    deciphering fate ... .
    The bed, a warm reach past
    the pillow
    like personal mortality in the
    incest breath of life.

    Warm stuff of dreams -
    the calender with its days mesh &
    march like soldiers
    dearly departed
    (cindered and bludgeoned)
    or the old sea-faring chest
    where all men are sailors
    past light's corner.

    Sturdy trudgeons,
    clock bursts thru the room
    mindful of time and aching,
    decaying things.

    Hallow's Eve in movements of the curtains -
    a remembered Rembrandt,
    self-portrait of the old man
    standing alone in a clammy room,
    idling the seconds, with drab

Paul Cameron Brown

Candlelight In Black

    The ghosts are marmalade
    thin as rinds across toast
    or the Weeping Willow, whose
    green beard leans,
    crane-like, into a child's
    backyard.

    A Morning Cloak butterfly,
    maroon wet with the paint
    of morning, cat paws
    thin filament leaves
    astride a larder
    of memories.

    Dalliance with the past,
    smoke grey these architects
    of memory
    the privet hedge,
    lone pine tree,
    jet black caterpillar
    poised about a green
    carrot top trigger
    laced in emperor's gold
    like fathoms of the sea
    held ... in quiet repose.

Paul Cameron Brown

Smokestack

    A small fish,
    its colors
    embers
    amid the swirling water;
    reminiscent of a
    café in darkness -
    the smokestack tablecloth fluttering
    in the matchbox breeze.

Paul Cameron Brown

The Breath Of Candles

The breath of candles,
hot and murky,
on the still air.

Giant factories wave wands
in luxury;
contaminate roving commuter bands
brown, from dirt knitted through white bread hair.

Paul Cameron Brown

Cold Passion

        Some dead undid undid their bushy jaws,
        and bags of blood let out their flies.. .
                    ? Dylan Thomas

    The land is barren
    wears straw wisps
    as an unkempt man
    might razor stubble.

    The land is dry, a faded yellow
    in its barrenness.
    A sky broods from afar,
    a stalactite sun accounts merely a jot
    above that thin road into despair.

    Grass lies everywhere dead,
    faded tongues above an
    earth afflicted with scleroderma,
    deadliest of skin disturbances,
    forerunner of deeper pestilence.

    An erasing wind whips the fields
    further into bereavement;
    turns tiny bits of chaff to pursue themselves
    in a mad St. Vitus dance
    of cold...

Paul Cameron Brown

Passageways

    Greet the days -
        greet the moon,
            gather the stars.. .
    Man is not at one with himself -
    collars the infidel ways of his
    race under pressure domes of widening silence.

    I scan the horizon barely cognizant
    of the metallic bits that pierce
    the night's crown - no
    jewelled orb stabs this queen's spectre.
    I am running and lost. . . ever slow
    to breech this reasoning.

    Honeysuckle mist with armfuls
    of orange lilies with scent stronger
    than the carriage needed in their gathering.

    Place the constellations upon their heads,
    the colour so transcends.
    And then there are the bludgeoned
    stars fallen into the eyes of
    my farmhouse scene.
    The sphin...

Paul Cameron Brown